Beautiful legends

Lu Yu said in "The Book of Tea": "Tea is drinking, and it comes from Shennong's." Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 info"The legendary Yan Emperor Shennong was the discoverer of tea, and he was also the legendary one who invented medicine to treat diseases.

In order to distinguish the pharmacological effects of herbs, Shennong once tasted herbs with his own mouth. Once, when he was resting in a field expedition, he was boiling water in a kettle, and a few leaves happened to fall in, turning the water in the pot yellow-green. Shennong didn't care, and drank a little of the soup, but was surprised to find that the yellow-green water tasted fragrant, and it was actually a rare medicinal material. Over time, Shennong came to the conclusion that this plant can quench thirst, refresh the mind, and diuretic and detoxify.

As for the origin of the name "tea", it is also related to Shennong's. The legendary Shennong has a transparent belly like glass, but he can see all the food in his stomach clearly, so he can know the pros and cons of this food for the body, which is also the reason why he has been poisoned many times and does not die. When he drank the yellow-green water, he saw it running in his stomach, and he scrubbed his stomach and intestines clean everywhere he went. So he called this plant "rub", which was later translated into the pronunciation of "tea".

The first account from Bashu

When King Wu of Zhou invaded the Shang Dynasty, the tribes of small southern countries such as Bashu who participated in the conquest offered tea as a tribute to King Wu of Zhou. Jin Changxuan's "Huayang National Chronicles" recorded: "King Wu of Zhou cut down the Xuan, and he really got the division of Bashu,...... Tea honey ...... All of them are tribute. "The time of King Wu's expedition is around 1066 B.C., which shows that there are clear records of tea events in China dating back at least 3,000 years.

Among the documents that can be seen now, there is an accurate record of tea, and the earliest and most reliable should be the "Covenant of the Servants" written by Wang Bao in the Han Dynasty. This article was written in the third year of Emperor Xuan of the Han Dynasty (59 BC), and is an important document in the history of tea science. Among them, "cooking utensils" and "Wuyang buying utensils" show that "Tu" has become a part of the social diet at that time, and it is a valuable thing used to entertain guests, and drinking tea has begun to be popular among the middle class.

The cultural relics of the Yangtze River basin are evident

China has the world's oldest tea-related ancient artifacts, which provides another perspective for the idea that China is the origin of the tea plant.

In recent years, the porcelain of the Eastern Han Dynasty unearthed in Shangyu City, Zhejiang Province, there are pots, cups, cups, bowls and other utensils, according to archaeologists, these utensils are the earliest tea sets in the world. This shows that tea drinking has gradually become common in the Eastern Han Dynasty. In the ancient tombs of the Western Han Dynasty in Jiangling County, Hubei Province, some tea leaves have been unearthed as burial items; A celadon urn engraved with the word "tea" has also been unearthed in Mawangdui in Changsha, Hunan Province, which is presumed by archaeologists to be a utensil used by people to store tea. This shows that 2,000 years ago, the southern royal family began to cook and drink tea.

Tea drinking is popular in the south

When did tea drinking become popular in China, everyone has different opinions. In general, it can be said that it began in the Han Dynasty and prevailed in the Tang Dynasty. Before the Tang Dynasty, Lu Yu's "Book of Tea" volume "The Drink of Six Teas" is generalized, saying: "Tea is drinking, originating from Shennong's, smelling in Lu Zhougong, Qi has Yan Ying, Han has Yangxiong, Sima Xiangru, Wu has Wei Yao, Jin has Liu Kun, Zhang Zai, Yuanzuna, Xie An, Zuo Si's disciples, all drink." But most of them are not historical facts. Even if it is a historical fact, it is not easy to understand without retribution. "The Book of Tea" cloud: Shennong's "Book of Food" "Tea and tea for a long time, powerful and happy" (Liu Yuanchang's "History of Tea" Volume 1). Lu Yu's "Book of Tea" thought that drinking tea began with Shennong's, but "The Book of Food" was a fake book, which was well known to everyone and was not enough evidence. "Erya" has the sentence of "bitter", the world takes "Erya" as the work of Zhou Gongshi, and mistakenly thinks that drinking tea has started since Zhou Gong, and I don't know that "Erya" is not made in Zhou Gong. It is not enough proof of the beginning of tea drinking.

Yanzi Chunqiu. The inner part of the miscellaneous is said to be "Yan Zi Qi, ten liters of cloth, food of millet food, five eggs, moss and vegetables", thinking that tea drinking (that is, tea) began in the Spring and Autumn Period. However, "Yanzi Spring and Autumn" is not written by Qi Yanying, and it is difficult to establish it at all. And Wan Weiting's "Sleepy School Chronicle Collection Evidence" volume eight clouds: "(Huai press) this book "Yanzi Spring and Autumn. The inner part of the miscellaneous "as three and five moss vegetables, the examination of the "Imperial Review" volume 867 cited as tea, included in the tea matter...... "Although it is tea, it is said that tea, I am afraid that it is not tea to drink." Therefore, the matter of tea drinking is not seen in the scriptures. The world also takes the poem "who is bitter for tea", as the evidence of drinking tea, I don't know that this tea is the bitter herb, not the "bitter" tea, can not be crowned Li Dai. It seems that the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period may not have the wind of drinking tea, so "Zhou Li. Tianguan. The first slaughter of the house said that the syrup man offered the king's six drinks, one was water, two days of pulp, three was liquor, four was cool, five was medicine, and six was unitary (1). Tea has not yet been seen. ...... Since the Han Dynasty, the record of drinking tea, sometimes heard, Wu Sun Hao in the Three Kingdoms every drink of the ministers' wine, the rate is limited to seven liters, Wei Yao is only two liters, or for the reduction, or give tea to be wine ("Three Kingdoms. Wu Zhi. Wei Yao's biography"), when the tea is used, I am afraid it has been used to entertain guests, otherwise, how can there be tea in the banquet? Jin Zhanghua tastes "drinking real tea, making people sleep less" (Zhang Hua's "Naturalist Chronicles"), is the Jin also has the wind of drinking tea, so the rise of tea tea, has a long history, Song Peihan's "Tea Narrative" said: "Tea began in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, flourished in the present dynasty (Song Dynasty)." "Luoyang Jialanji" is said to drink tea in the Southern Dynasty during the reign of Emperor Wu of Liang. The so-called style of drinking tea began in the Han and Wei dynasties, but it was not possible to prevail in the Han and Wei dynasties. Because of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, this fashion was only popular in the Southern Dynasties, and the Northern Dynasties had not yet taken it as a strange thing, not to mention the Han and Wei dynasties, and the two anecdotes of this "Miscellaneous Records of Tea History" are as follows:

Qi Wang Xiao first entered Wei, do not eat mutton crispy, often eat fresh fish soup, thirsty to drink tea juice, Beijing Shizi, see Xiao a drink and a bucket, the number is leaky, and then Gaozu will eat mutton cheese porridge, Gaozu asked strangely, to the sun, sheep is the ancestor of land animals, fish is the head of the water tribe, the good is different, and each is treasured...... Only the tea is not in the middle, and the cheese is a slave, Gaozu laughed, because the tea is a cheese slave, he Peng Cheng Wang dug Xiao said: "...... Tomorrow, I will set up a meal (i.e., fish) for Qing, and there are also butter slaves. ”

When Xiao Zhengde surrendered, Yuan Yi wanted to set up tea, first asked Qing how much water was bad, Zhengde did not know what he meant, and replied: Xia Guan was born in a water town, and since he was established, he has not suffered from the difficulties of Yanghou, and the guests laughed.

According to the previous one, after the Northern Dynasty, Wei Jing's master and son, when he saw Qi Wang Xiao drinking tea, he was weird, and his name was leaking; From the latter part, You Yang especially wants to prepare tea for Xiao Zhengde, one is rare and strange, and the other is not a household item, at least enough to prove that it is not an ordinary thing, otherwise, it is not a North Korean black thing, at this time, drinking tea, I am afraid that it is limited to a certain place, in a certain class, it is not popular, so it can only be said to be the beginning of tea drinking. The rise of tea drinking began in the Tang Dynasty. The people of the Tang Dynasty became addicted to drinking tea. Dongpo poems: "Zhou poems remember the bitterness, and the tea is out of this world." It is based on today's tea. Since the Tang Dynasty, tea has been clear to the leader, good up and down, and the common people drink several bowls a day, which has indeed become a trend. (Excerpted from Huang Xianfan, A Preliminary Study on the Interpretation of Ancient Books, Guangxi Normal University Press, July 2004, 1st edition)

Note (1): The original character is unitary side plus also, both left and right.

Indeed, in many parts of the world, the habit of drinking tea was passed down from China. Therefore, many people think that tea drinking was pioneered by the Chinese, and the tea drinking habits and tea planting habits in other parts of the world are directly or indirectly transmitted from China.

(1) Shennong period: Tang. Lu Yu's "Book of Tea": "Tea is drinking, and it comes from Shennong's." In the history of China's cultural development, the origin of everything related to agriculture and plants is often attributed to Shennong. Once you get here, you can't push it up again. It is precisely because of this that Shennong has become the god of agriculture.

(2) Western Zhou Dynasty: Jin. Chang Xuan's Huayang National Chronicles. Ba Zhi": "King Wu of Zhou fell, and he really got the teacher of Bashu, and the tea and honey were all tribute." This record shows that when King Wu of the Zhou Dynasty invaded the Zhou, the Ba Kingdom had already paid tribute to King Wu of Zhou with tea and other precious products. It is also recorded in the "Huayang National Chronicles" that there were already artificially cultivated tea gardens at that time.

(3) Qin and Han dynasties: Western Han Dynasty. Wang Bao's "Covenant": "Cooking Tools", "Wuyang Buying", after the examination of the tea is today's tea. In recent years, in the Western Han Dynasty tomb of Mawangdui in Changsha, it was found that there were bamboo slips and woodcuts of "Yizhi" and "Yijia" in the funeral inventory. We still drink the same drink as our very old ancestors such as Jiang Taigong, which is indeed a very exciting thing. It can give us a lot of reverie.

The origin of the word "tea".

In ancient historical materials, there are many names for tea, but "tea" is the correct name, and the word "tea" was generally written as "荼" before the Middle and Tang Dynasty. The word "荼" has a multi-semantic nature, indicating tea, which is one of them. Due to the development of tea production, the popularity of tea drinking is getting higher and higher, and the frequency of using tea words is also getting higher and higher.

The word "tea" from the "荼" simplified sprout, originated in the Han Dynasty, in the ancient Han seal, some of the "荼" word has been subtracted a stroke, become the shape of the word "tea". Not only the glyphs, but also the pronunciation of "tea" has been established in the Western Han Dynasty. For example, the tea tomb in Hunan Province now, the Western Han Dynasty was Liu Xin's territory, commonly known as the "Tu" Wangcheng, which was one of the 13 subordinate counties of Changsha at that time, called "Tu" Ling County. In the Book of Han. In the Geographical Chronicles, the "Tu" of the "Tu" Mausoleum, Yan Shigu notes as: The sound is extravagant, and the sound is reversed. This reverse tangential phonetic is the pronunciation of the word "tea" now. Judging from this phenomenon, the establishment of the pronunciation of the word "tea" is earlier than the establishment of the glyph of the word "tea".

China has a vast land and many ethnic groups, so it is also colorful in language and writing, with multiple names for the same thing and many ways to write the same name.

In the ancient historical materials, there are many names about tea, to the middle and Tang Dynasty, the sound, shape and meaning of tea have tended to be unified, and later, because of the wide spread of Lu Yu's "Book of Tea", the glyph of "tea" has been further established, until today.

Tracing the origin of tea

In ancient Chinese literature, there are records of tea consumption very early, and there are different names depending on the place of origin. Chinese tea was spread to foreign countries as early as the Western Han Dynasty, and Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty sent an envoy to the Indochina Peninsula, bringing in addition to gold and brocade silk, as well as tea. During the Yongming period of Emperor Wu of Qi during the Northern and Southern Dynasties, Chinese tea was exported to Turkey with silk and porcelain. In the first year of Tang Shunzong's Yongzhen, Japan's most Cheng Zen master returned to China and brought Chinese tea seeds back to Japan. Later, tea continued to spread from China to all parts of the world, so that many countries began to grow tea and have the habit of drinking tea.

But there are also people who can find evidence that the habit of drinking tea was not only invented by Chinese, but also in some other parts of the world, such as India and Africa.

In 1823, a major of the British invading army discovered a large tea tree in the wild in India, and some people began to believe that the birthplace of tea was in India, or at least in India. Of course, there are also records of wild tea trees in China, all of which are concentrated in the southwest region, and the records also include individual areas of Gansu and Hunan. Tea tree is a very old dicot plant that is closely related to people's lives.

In China, there is also a debate about the earliest origin of the tea plant, and there are several theories. Many people believe that in Yunnan, some scholars assert that Xishuangbanna in Yunnan is the origin of tea after careful research and research. The earliest written record of the artificial cultivation of tea trees began with Mengshan tea in the Western Han Dynasty. This is recorded in the "Sichuan Tongzhi". (To be continued.) If you like this work, you are welcome to come to the starting point (qidian.com) to vote for recommendation, monthly pass, your support, is my biggest motivation. (To be continued.) )